The shadow knows

Michael Reardon | Light and Shadow

MICHAEL REARDON’S painting Light and Shadow has been juried into the 100th international exhibition of the National Watercolor Society, to be presented online this fall from October 1 to December 20.

Reardon, one of the nation’s most respected watercolor painters, tells how it happened.

I had long been interested in doing a fire escape painting, mainly because of the beguiling shadow patterns. After several false starts over the years, last June I saw this fire escape outside Specs’, an old San Francisco dive and thought this could be the one. I did a sketch but put it aside because there was something wrong with the composition.

In April, I was rearranging my stack of “problem” sketches when a piece of paper covered the right side of the sketch and, voilá, the composition problem was solved. 

Sometimes painting works in mysterious, or not so mysterious, ways.